There are some things that you need to think about whenever you start a new blog or decide to take an existing one in a new direction. In this article we’ll be looking at topics such as the name of the blog, the topics that it will cover, your posting schedule and your writing style.

Picking a Name For Your Blog

The first decision to be made is of course the name (and domain) of your blog. There are general two choices - using your own name or using a name related to the primary topic of the blog.

Your choice here will depend on the aims of your blog. If you intend to use it to promote some kind of personal service then using your name can be a good idea because it will always remain relevant even if your services differ over time. If you’re blogging about a specifc topic and you intend to monetize it via external methods then it can be better to use a name that is related to the topic.

Deciding Upon Topics For Your Blog

Many new bloggers start their first blog by just blogging about anything that comes into their head and end up with a broad range of largely unrelated topics. This is not all that efficient as many readers simply don’t have time to wade through posts they are not interested in and it makes it more difficult to target monetization efforts.

When it comes to writing your posts you will be able to organise them into categories which makes it much easier for new readers to find your posts and its easy for them to see at a glance what your blog is about. When you just post a mish-mash of posts on all sorts of topics that are not really related then it can be more difficult to turn a one-off visitor into a regular subscriber.

Deciding on a Posting Schedule

A common trend amongst new bloggers is to start out bursting with enthusiasm. Indeed, much of the advice around tells you to blog as much as you can - at least every day if possible. Whilst more posts do in theory give you more chances to be found in the search engines, there are many readers who suffer from information overload and simply cannot keep up with busy blogs which leaves many of your posts unread.

In my experience, the actual posting schedule really doesn’t matter all that much. Many readers will consume their blogs via RSS feeds and will read your posts at their convenience, not yours. There are many successful bloggers that only post once a week.

One trend that I see with many blogs is that the blogger starts out enthusiastically by posting every day or even many times per day but over time he either loses steam, finds it too time consuming or simply runs out of stuff to say and then the schedule starts to slip and the posts become less frequent. This is noticeable to the reader and it does not look good!

A much better idea is to start off with a gentle posting schedule (you wont have many readers at the start anyway) and if you feel that you want to do more, to increase it slowly over time. Don’t do it the other way around!

Do You Have a Particular Writing Style?

Your writing style is a slightly tricky area. Your writing is a reflection of who you are, what your opinions are, your values and passions etc. A blog is all about the writing and in my experience when bloggers do best when they write freely from the heart in their own unique style.

My advice is simply to blog in your own style, whatever that means! Some people are very conservative, some people use very colourful language, others like to be controversial, others are very dry and matter-of-fact. Whatever you are, simply be who you are and write as yourself.

Similarly, I see people asking questions such as, how long should my posts be? This again is down to personal style though it is perhaps influenced by your posting frequency. Short, snappy posts may be best if you post very often but if you only post once per week you’ll probably want to publish something with a bit more substance!

It really doesn’t matter what your style is because the readers who like your style will stick around and subscribe and the ones who don’t, wont! Simple as that really! There is no way that any single style is going to appeal to everybody so don’t try! No matter what your posting style is, there will be people who like it and some who don’t, but it never pays to try and be something that you are not.